Presses FAQ's
Frequently Asked Questions About Metal Pressing Equipment
What Is Metal Pressing?
Metal pressing, or stamping, is a specialized manufacturing process for converting flat metal sheets into specific shapes. This process can include several metal forming techniques such as blanking, punching, piercing, bending, etc.
Metal pressing serves various industries, including automotive, aerospace, medical, agricultural, construction, appliance manufacture, and more. As technology, innovation, and global markets continue to evolve; there will be a greater need for large quantities of quickly-produced parts—both simple and complex.
The good news is that pressing serves as both a fast and cost-effective solution for large-quantity manufacturing needs. Manufacturers who require metal parts stamped for a project generally look for four essential things—low cost, high quality, durability, and quick turnaround time.
How Does Metal Pressing Work?
It’s mostly any process that takes a massive tool and die, puts it into a machine that exerts several tons of force very quickly, and then uses them to press metal objects into the desired shape.
Typical examples of metal pressing would be:
- Flattening Metal - This can be done to either smooth out an object or make it thinner at one point.
- Swaging Rounded Metal - It makes a workpiece thinner similar to flattening but is usually applied to wires rather than sheet metal. Swaging wires makes one end more narrow, so it fits into openings more easily.
- Piercing Metal - Rather than just flattening the metal, the tool and die from a sheet metal stamping machine will puncture all the way through. This creates openings that can be used to connect multiple workpieces.
- Coining Metal - Instead of punching a small hole in a piece of metal, the sheet metal stamping machine’s tool and die will press the sheet metal into a specific shape.
Because metal pressing works on cold metal pieces that haven’t been rendered malleable, they rely on extreme force to get the job done. Some machines can exert up to 80 tons of force.The advantage of this type of process is that one often doesn’t need to worry about secondary operations or wait for the workpiece to cool off.
Metal pressing can also reduce production waste by reshaping metal instead of cutting pieces off and discarding them. Rather than cutting a hole in a sheet metal piece, the piercing process with a metal stamping machine moves the metal out of the way to create a hole without ending up with excess metal scrap.
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